


Squish to Condish

by PumpkinDoodles



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinDoodles/pseuds/PumpkinDoodles
Summary: Bucky with the Good Hair.





	Squish to Condish

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note: I own nothing! I wrote this drabble because it happened to me & I thought it was funny. I just grew out the pixie cut/short hairstyles I’ve had since I was 14 & couldn’t figure out why my shoulder-length hair was so wonky and frizzy until a DNA test was all _you appear to have the gene for wavy hair_ and I started scrunching with a diffuser & doing squish to condish and was like, well, damn, I _do_ have wavy hair. I thought it would be a hilarious way to explain Bucky’s glow up in Infinity War. 

Bucky pushed his hair off his forehead and sighed. He hadn’t washed it in a day or two. Whenever he washed and dried it, his long hair was puffy and frizzy and just…huge.  It had never done that when it was short. But Steve had once said something about his long hair being pretty, so Bucky wasn’t going to cut it. He’d thought letting it get longer would make it behave–fall straight and smooth like a shampoo ad, instead of all puffy and frizzy with ends flipping up as they hit his shoulders–so he couldn’t understand why it was so unmanageable now?

“Why are you so glum?” Princess Shuri asked him. They were doing his regular arm check-up. “Do you miss your boyfriend?” she teased.

“No,” Bucky said.

“No?”

“Yes,” Bucky grumbled. “And it’s–it’s my _hair._ I can’t figure out why it doesn’t dry nice anymore. It dried nice and straight when it was short. All I had to do was comb it. I just used to comb in brilliantine. Now it’s all frizzy. It gets a little better when it’s not freshly washed, but then I feel gross. I can’t straighten it, it flips out at the ends. And brushing it just makes it worse–why are you laughing?”

“You are so ignorant,” Shuri told him, still giggling. “Your hair is _wavy,_ Woof-Woof.” Shuri never called him the White Wolf. Like the Dora Milaje, she wasn’t afraid of Bucky one bit. She liked to mock his fearsome-sounding nickname. She pulled up one of her high-tech screens with Bucky’s records.

“What?” Bucky said.

“I ran a DNA test with trait markers when you arrived. You have the marker for wavy hair,” she told him, “it’s based on the shape of your hair cuticles. If you have been brushing your hair, you are doing it wrong.”

“I am?” Bucky said.

“Brushing breaks up the wave pattern and makes it frizzy,” Shuri said. “Also, you should have blue eyes, no freckles, and cilantro tastes like soap to you,” she told him. He stared at her.

“You can tell all that?” Bucky said, seesawing between surprise and delight. “I didn’t even know my hair was wavy,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Even _Americans_ have this technology. We’ve had it forever.”

“So, I shouldn’t brush my hair?” he asked.

“No, not when it’s dry,” she told him. “I will send you to the royal hairdresser. She will teach you what to do.” Shuri shook her head. “You do not even recognize the hair growing out of your head, colonizer!”

“It just behaved when it was short,” he said, pulling a face.

“That is because your waves don’t start at the root, you silly man,” she said, shooing him out of her lab. “Go fix yourself. I have real work to do.”

That was how Bucky found himself at the royal hairdresser’s, learning that he needed to scrunch conditioner in his hair to make it wave and never comb it when it was dry, only when it was soaking wet. “You must dry it with a diffuser,” the hairdresser told him seriously. “Or you will frizz, the waves will fall out, and your entire curl pattern will be ruined.” She said _ruined_ in the same tone as Okoye said treason. It was a little intimidating.

“Oh,” Bucky said, watching in the holographic mirror as she scrunched his hair upwards. She had put a little bit of a sweet-smelling oil in it.

“You need more moisture than someone with straight hair,” she said. “But not too much. Or it will weigh down your waves.”

“And my wave pattern will be ruined?” Bucky said, trying to convey that he was an attentive pupil.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “The more you encourage the wave pattern, the more it will form. But you must not disturb it with brushing and too much straightening and heat.” She scrunched and dried his hair until it waved softly, then clucked her tongue. “This will do, but it will be better if you continue to do what I have taught you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Scrunch and condition,” he repeated.

Bucky left the hairdresser’s feeling as though he was responsible for a tiny, delicate pet or something. But his hair did look beautiful.


End file.
